Environmental groups are furious about a federal grant designed to “correct the misconception that some fresh produce items contain excessive amounts of pesticide residues." The Alliance for Food and Farming, a Watsonville, California, trade association representing more than 50 large produce growers and marketers and pesticide and fertilizer suppliers, is slated to receive $180,000 administered through the ...

We came across this fantastic post this morning from our friends at the Pesticide Action Network. It's a great primer for anyone trying to understand the myriad issues concerning pesticide use: http://www.panna.org/issues/pesticides-101-primer ...

Check out Chore Number 2: http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=25531734>1=35000 ...

[caption id="attachment_2111" align="alignleft" width="594" caption="Jan Valentic (Life.com photo)"][/caption] Some of you may recall that I came back from a major trade show in Chicago quite fired up about the state of the organic lawn and garden industry. "We're Winning the War, But Who Will Collect the Spoils?" I wrote in this blog post a few weeks back: http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2010/08/we ...

This question of whether or not glyphosate — primarily marketed to consumers as Roundup — is safe continues to be answered in the negative. This report out of Brussels is just the latest of many that link the popular herbicide to all sorts of health and environmental maladies: http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/fileadmin/pics/gmo-free-regions/conference_2010/press/Carrasco_soybean_PR.pdf ...

During a whirlwind nine days that will include trips to Baltimore, Md., Washington, D.C., Unity, Maine, and New York City, the plane will touch down Thursday, Sept. 23, in Boulder, Colo., for a presentation at that city's Center for Resource Conservation. Slated for 6 p.m., the event will include my lecture titled "Transitioning to Natural Lawn Care: Why Organic, Why Now?" as well as a question and answer s ...

[caption id="attachment_2096" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="(from www.firefly.org)"][/caption] Growing up on a dairy farm in Bradford, Maine, I'm not sure I even knew what a fireworks display looked like — but that didn't matter. Every night in the summer we had our own fireworks show in the fields and lawns around the house and barn in the form of fireflies. Catching the fireflies in jars and then ...

Here's a lively post from the Huffington Post that offers a a lifetime of information in a two-minute read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-rodale/i-bet-you-dont-know-jack_b_716158.html ...

Here is an article, albeit somewhat dated, that reviews why scientists can probably never definitively say that a given pesticide is safe when used as directed: http://web.ncf.ca/bf250/safe.html ...

[caption id="attachment_2082" align="alignnone" width="504" caption="Crabgrass seeds turn reddish purple in late summer. (Ernie Reppe photo)"][/caption] Questions about crabgrass control are coming to us in droves right now from at least two thirds of the United States and all of Canada. Ernie Reppe's email from today is typical: "I don't know how things are out East for you, but people in the Midwest here ...